Surviving The Sea of Grief

Editors note: loss of a loved one, grief, blood, piercing

Our love felt like when you lay everything bare and choose to love each other, in all the depth and complexity of every single harsh and soft edge. When you are so enveloped in the other that you forget where you start and they begin, where they end and you open. To be brave with the shadows and devoted to every part of someone else. When I lost my life partner, I felt their death as soon as it happened. I was at a warehouse rave afters on molly in Denver, Colorado and was overcome by an immense sadness and couldn’t stop thinking about them. 

When I found out the next day, it was my 27th birthday. I was supposed to play a show in New Mexico that night where I was going to get a broken heart live branded. Instead, I felt my whole world crash around me. They were my first epic queer love. It was the type of love where we enmeshed into each other and lapped up every inch of each other's flesh. Every 7 years the body completely regenerates its cells and we knew each other for 6 years. One year away from being an entirely different person than who I was when we had met. We met at 21 and 22 and went on a trip to Slab City for my 21st birthday. 

There was a moment where we were both walking into the vast expanse of the desert on mushrooms with two abandoned water tanks on each side. We were walking parallel to one another, and a car was playing classical music out of their windows. I remember hoping that we would walk side by side forever. When they died, I felt half of myself break and get torn out of me. I have never felt so much pain. The ache that their presence has left is a void that feels immeasurable. 

They were my first epic queer love. It was the type of love where we enmeshed into each other and lapped up every inch of each other's flesh.

We fell in love and went on the road together, traveling across the countryside to the different cities of the underworld and living out of a rusted ford 2012 transit, sharing a twin mattress. We could read each other’s minds and finish each other's sentences. We were the same height, shoe size, and contact lens prescription. We shared all of our clothes, would match our outfits, and got at least 10 matching tattoos. When I think about their ashes, I realize that all of those markings have disappeared. They have gone into the atmosphere and the only relic left is the permanence of my body. I got a tattoo with their ashes and drank the ink after. We already made a blood pact years ago and I know that their blood also flows through me. 

The thing about grief is it is the most intense pain possible but there are no physical repercussions. If I get punched in the face, I bruise. But I feel as though my entire body has been cracked open piece by piece and rearranged and all I have to show for it is dark circles under my eyes. 

I recently did a performance in tribute to my partner where I got their name in needles through both my arms, had their name carved into my skin, and 15 needles inserted through my face. I bled all over bridal lace on a mural I created of them and put the bloody lace on the altar I had set up. I created a live noise score using complete analog hardware and added in songs we had made for each other for birthdays, Valentines day, and anniversaries over the years. I was the corpse bride bleeding widow mourning and wailing deep into the night. I thought this piece would give me more relief but instead it felt like throwing a rock in a river. I felt as though I had just scratched the surface of a process that will probably take the rest of my life. 

I feel as though my entire body has been cracked open piece by piece and rearranged and all I have to show for it is dark circles under my eyes. 

Something I learned from them is to never hide from grief. Sometimes they would cry so hard and deeply it would scare me because of how much they chose to feel. They never accepted being numb or being afraid. They taught me to regurgitate myself out and look hardship in the face with tenacity, a cackle, and a smile. One time we were in Joshua Tree on the edge of a mountain and they looked into the void and screamed so loud it shook the whole valley.  

When we held each other for the first time, I felt like anything was possible. Like the world was one giant expanse of wonder and there was nothing that could stop us from doing anything. In many ways we did. We traveled the world together and created an expansive web through our love and art. I have seen the edges of the earth and crevices of the planet with them. We lived everyday going at full speed, like somehow we knew one day there would not be a tomorrow. 

When I was at the mortuary and had to see the body bag, I felt myself completely explode and go into the underworld. It was dark and vast. At first I felt like it was just death, but I talked to a friend who said the womb is also a similar consistency, so it is death and rebirth. I did die that day, the part of me that lived with them and through them died. I had to come back as a different form, one that can feel the ache and absence of the space they used to occupy. Some days I wake up and realize they're gone and my brain cannot compute. It almost freezes or it feels like I am going into quicksand, like the Bottomless Lakes in New Mexico that we once traveled to. I was so tempted to see what it would feel like to get swallowed whole by sinkholes into an abyss, but now I experience it everyday. They warned me not to fall in then, and I have to do it for myself now.

We traveled the world together and created an expansive web through our love and art.

It really baffles me to know so much about a person who is dead. To know their morning routine, what side of the bed they like to sleep on, their favorite snacks, the music they listen to when they’re sad, the tone their voice goes to when they are mad, the sound of their laugh, the width of their smile, even their workout routine or the places they feel the most pleasure on their body. To have known someone inside out for years and been so completely living inside their skin, to have built routines and spent days just in each other's company, and to have believed that was going to be part of my life forever in whatever form we shared. We were lovers, best friends, life partners, siblings, husbands, collaborators, divorcees, strangers, and soulmates. Forever and eternally at the end of the day, we were soulmates because we had made that commitment to each other years ago. I believe that soulmates are an energetic connection that you choose to cultivate with someone. A commitment you make to pour your life force into merging with the other, and we did that for 6 years. I always thought I was going to die first. They were so ready to live. They chose to live everyday and they chose to live with the strongest life force I have ever seen. 

I always joked about dying first. When I die, I want everyone I love to have a bone off my body, and they were going to get my skull. When I had to carry their ashes on me for almost 24 hours, I could barely think, my brain felt static, but I knew I had to hold them close to my heart the entire time. I snuck them in my jacket on the plane so I could hold them in my lap the whole ride. My brain had stopped working but my heart knew I had to keep them close. I don’t think I will ever experience a love like this again and honestly many people don’t in their lifetime. 

To have lived so many lifetimes with them over the course of the 6 years is a gift and also a curse. It is a gift to have so many years of memories and the depth of the love we shared but to have to carry the loss of that is a lonely burden. Many days I feel as though I am on a ship far away from shore, charting vast waters with no one in sight. Grief feels like drowning with no life raft, instead just having to gasp for air again and again, hoping that breathing feels less like choking one day. I am keeping a tally mark on my skin for every altar I make for them, so I can have my own map of my pain. I wish I could dock my boat at the shore and run into the ocean naked with them again like we did so many times over the years. Instead, I have to learn how to sail back because my life is bigger than just my own sorrow and I owe it to those I love to not disappear. I know they are anchoring my ship forever, even if it's from a different ocean now.

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